


A•GLITTERING•INSTRUMENT Side B

by malicegeres



Series: The Melanie Crowley Cinematic Universe [3]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Deleted Scenes, F/F, Grandchildren, Historical, Kid Fic, M/M, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Tiny Melanie, and for anyone who happens to give a shit and want to share in my self-indulgence, idk why i'm making any of this searchable it's literally just for me, self-indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22075225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malicegeres/pseuds/malicegeres
Summary: A selection of B-Sides from my big, plotty kidfic, A Glittering Instrument.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Original Aziraphale/Crowley Child(ren) (Good Omens)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Melanie Crowley Cinematic Universe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1303757
Comments: 83
Kudos: 92





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, bitches, B-Sides are here. I did so many timeskips and was very insistent on giving my kidfic plot, so I didn't get to do any of the super self-indulgent cutesy stuff other people get to do with their kidfic. I was careful to maintain a forward momentum and a balance with the A-Sides, and now I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want and show people because I'm a glutton for praise and I know at least my friends care about my OC's. Enjoy this fanfic of my own fanfic. It will update indefinitely until I get bored.

Melanie liked being seven. Five had been difficult, what with her father uprooting their life for reasons she didn't quite understand at the time; six had been a year of stumbling through the Italian language so she could finally make some new friends; but seven was off to a strong start as the summer drew to a close. She had Luciano to protect her from the older boys when they played, and she'd moved on from learning to speak Italian to learning to read Latin. For the first time since she and Papa had to leave France, life was finally beginning to make sense.

Most of the reading she did was out of a Latin Bible, because it was fun reading a book that had someone she personally knew in it. Her Latin was halting at best, but she had Genesis 1:3 practically memorized, and that _felt_ like she could read and understand it, so she returned to the passage often.

One day her father looked over her shoulder and said, "You know there are other pages in this book, don't you?"

Melanie traced the golden lines outlining the Tree of Knowledge in the illustration opposite the passage and smiled. "I know," she said, "but this is the part you're in."

He pursed his lips the way he was about to talk about something he didn’t like talking about. “I don’t come out of it looking very good, you know.”

She looked up from her book. “Why not? You didn’t say anything bad, and God told Eve she was going to die if she ate the apples. But she didn’t, so the only person telling a lie in this is God.”

“I don’t think She meant that she’d die right that second,” he said, sitting down next to her and looking at the book. “I mean, humans _did_ start dying after they left Eden. It’s too small a sample size to say for sure, really.”

“Were you trying to do something bad?”

He shrugged. “That was the idea, but to be honest the apple thing just sort of came up while we were talking. I was as as curious what would happen if she ate it as she was.”

“So you’re okay,” said Melanie conclusively. That was the best thing about being seven; you knew a thing or two about a world, and sometimes you were right and the grownups were wrong.

Papa, for his part, seemed happy to encourage it. He nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe. There are a handful of philosophers who would agree with you.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yes,” he said, pulling out another book. “In Greek and Hebrew, mostly, so let’s get going on your lessons so you can learn to read them one day.”

Melanie didn’t mind. She’d spent a long time listening to her father go between French with her, Italian with their neighbors, and Hindi, Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese with the traders they met peoplewatching along the Grand Canal. To her young mind, he seemed to fit in with whoever he talked to, and she wanted to be just like him.

He never seemed to like it when she told him that. It always made him sigh, ruffle her hair, and say, “You can do a lot better than that, sweetheart."

She couldn't understand it, not even with seven whole years of experience and learning behind her. Obviously working for the Devil sounded bad, and Melanie had no desire to try it for herself, but other than that she was positive that she had the coolest papa in the whole world. That was partly for the ordinary reasons most children thought their parents were cool, namely that he was the window through which she viewed the world and that she couldn't imagine life without him; but Melanie knew a lot of children, most of whom also had parents they thought were the coolest, and unless somebody was hiding something from her she was very certain none of _those_ parents were magic.

Papa was working hard to teach her the rules of the universe, things like how boats floated and birds flew, but what Melanie loved the most was the ways her papa could break those rules without even thinking about it. Hearths lit up at a glance, toys and treats appeared from nowhere, he could see in darkness even a cat would stumble around in, and she never had to worry about hunger or monsters or robbers the way her friends all did because she knew her papa could protect her.

And, yes, he had things that he was afraid of that she was scared of, too. Heaven had wanted to kill her, and they'd had to move away because they found out about her. Hell was even scarier, because they hurt Papa to make him do bad things, and she knew that if they found out about her, they'd try to make her do bad things, too. But one thing he was scared of that she just couldn't understand was…Well, she didn't know _what_ to call it. It wasn't that he was afraid of people, exactly. He was always saying how much he loved humans, and she knew how happy he was to have a daughter who was half human herself. He talked to people plenty, in markets and at the docks and sometimes just waiting around at festivals and plays. But he never got close, not like Melanie did with the other children, and the only time he ever seemed to catch her sneaking out by herself was when she tried to go outside without something to cover her eyes. He'd told her it was to keep her safe, because he was a demon and she looked like him, so if people saw her eyes, they'd think she was evil, too.

She got the reasoning behind it. It was the fourteenth century and all her friends went to church, so she knew what people thought of demons. Papa wanted to keep her safe, and she didn't show anyone her eyes because she'd never seen him do it, either, even with all the magic he had to protect himself. But Melanie liked that she had her father's eyes. They showed that she was special, and one day she was going to be magic, too, and if Hell never found out about her, she could use that magic to do anything she wanted.

It just seemed as though Papa was scared of anyone thinking of him as anything other than human. Not just other humans, but Melanie herself. He always got a little shifty when she picked up a Bible, and while he never dodged her questions, she had to ask a _lot_ more questions to get anything out of him about how angels and demons worked than anything he had to tell her about Earth.

And then there was the night she found out he had wings. She'd had to _find out_ that he had _wings!_

Michaelmas was a particularly awkward holiday for Papa, because it celebrated the archangel who'd driven all of Lucifer's armies, including him, out of Heaven, but he knew how much Melanie loved festivals. Melanie, for her part, had shown her gratitude by stuffing her face with as many honeyed fruits and other sweets as she could get her hands on.

"Slow down," he said as she took a large bite out of her apple cake. "You're going to be sick."

Melanie finished chewing with some effort and swallowed. "If anyone should get to go nuts today, it's us. I'm doing gluttony because Michael would hate it."

And Papa had smiled, looking very surprised to be doing so, and pointed to another stand. "How about some of those candied apricots?"

So, really, he should have expected she'd be coming into his room that night. She'd made it to the chamber pot in time, thankfully, but her tummy still hurt and, even if it didn't, what were you supposed to do after throwing up but go tell an adult about it? She opened the door quietly, wanting to give him a chance to wake up gently, but then she stepped into the room and gasped.

Papa was sitting on top of his blankets, his legs crisscrossed beneath him and his shirt hanging from one of the bedposts. He was sat facing the fire across from the bed, his top half almost entirely obscured by one of the giant wings protruding from his back. Firelight sparkled off of the feathers. Melanie caught glimpses of blue, green, and what might have been red or what might have been violet, and she thought some of the feathers looked as though they were made of real gold. He was holding the wing obscuring him up and around himself, the long feathers at the ends splayed wide, and his back shifted with the movement his arms as the left wing lay drooped lazily onto the bed beneath him.

He startled as soon as she gasped. He sat up straight so that his eyes appeared in profile just above his right wing, and then he lowered it slowly and looked at Melanie. "Er," he said. "Hey, kiddo."

"Whoa!" Melanie shouted.

Papa's face cringed and he took a deep breath. "Do you need something?"

She hesitated a moment, struggling to recall what she'd come in for before surprise overtook her. "I threw up."

"Oh." He brushed the wing back, and it folded behind him as he raised the left one to meet it in the same stiff position. "Are you alright?"

"My tummy hurts," she said, unable to keep from staring at the wings.

He glanced behind him and sighed. They lowered, and then suddenly they disappeared as though he'd tucked them away somewhere. "Do you need me to make you feel better?"

"Yes, please," she said. She trotted across the room and hopped up onto the bed next to him. Then, once he'd put a hand to her stomach and banished the sick feeling she had, she thanked him and asked, "What were you doing?"

"Grooming my wings," he replied with forced neutrality.

"Like angel wings?"

He shrugged. "Only wings I've ever had."

Melanie leaned back to get a closer look at his back. She expected to see bumps or feathers or unusual markings, but it was the same expanse of brown skin and dark freckles she'd always known. She sat up and faced him again. "But you don't have them now."

"Not physically, no, but it's not like with shapeshifting where things disappear and they're just gone. They're a part of me. I can always feel them, even when they're not out."

She nodded, and then she studied his face. "I'm sorry for scaring you. Are they private?"

"No," he said, though he didn't sound certain himself. "I just don't generally show them to people."

"Can they fly?"

"Yeah," he said. "That's how I got around most places before I had you, and I'm sure it will be again after you're grown."

Melanie considered asking him if he could take her flying sometime, or to see them again, but he wasn't meeting her eyes and his hands were gripping the bedsheets nervously. So what she said instead was, "They're really pretty."

He managed a smile for her. "Thanks. So, did you make a mess?"

"No," she said, "I made it in time."

"Nice," said Papa. "Do you want to spend the night?"

She shook her head. "You were busy. I just wanted to let you know it happened."

He waved a hand dismissively. "I can finish tomorrow. You're getting big, Mel, and we don't have many more nights like this."

That was what got her about Papa. Yes, he was magic and he was always cold when she hugged him and he had yellow eyes and secret wings, but at the end of the day he was just a father raising his daughter like anybody else. All those other things were what set him apart, and Melanie was proud to share even a small part of what made him strange because they were the things that marked them as a family.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Laura, who I can't believe appreciates my weird little Claudette anecdotes. Congratulations on finishing the thing you were working on!

Claudette found it difficult to remember that she was serving a thing of darkness and helping him to raise his unholy spawn. The challenge was, when you ignored the horrible eyes he so often hid behind his dark spectacles, and his sorcery, and his blaspheming, and the appearance of the girl, he just seemed like a young man doing his best to look after a baby.

Or at least, she thought he was young. Not only was he something obviously monstrous, he was rich, and the rich aged more slowly than the poor. Claudette was only twenty-one, herself, and now that she was clean, fed, and under a roof she thought she looked about thirty in, say, duchess years. When she feared for the fate of her immortal soul, she looked in a mirror and thought about how many years she was buying her sons by serving this master. A priest might tell her that her sons were still young enough to be innocent, that their souls hadn’t yet been tainted with sin like hers had out in the streets, but she’d rather be damned than deny her sons a chance at life. Letting them die seemed a bigger sin than nursing a monstrous child next to her own. At least it was giving life.

Besides, her master left her sons well enough alone. One time she’d caught him talking to Henri, her eldest, and it took little more than a sharp glare of her to get him to shoo the child away from then on. She wasn’t often able to keep little Maxime away from the master’s child, but that was only because the master was still learning how to look after a babe himself.

He was a keen student, and plenty open to instruction. In their first weeks together he’d often come to Claudette with a screaming child in his arms and terror etched on his face saying, “I know you’ve just fed her. How do I stop her crying?”

Claudette knew the little creature’s cries well. She looked at the way the infant writhed in her father’s arms as he bounced her, listened to the nasal, whining pitch of her wailing, and said, “Stop fussing with her. She’s saying she’s done with you and she’s ready for sleep.”

He looked down at the child and stilled her. “Yeah?” he asked her, as though expecting her to respond. “You sick of me already?” Then he looked back up and gave Claudette an earnest smile. “Thank you. Hopefully she stays down a good few hours before she needs either of us again.”

Slowly, the barriers started coming down between them. Claudette was shocked when her master learned her habits well enough that he knew when to step in and offer to take his child from her without her asking. She’d been on her own for so long, and the sting of bringing another child into a world that wouldn’t deign to house and feed him without her begging was still fresh enough that she hadn’t thought to put her guard up against acts of kindness. So they became friends. Claudette didn’t trust her master as far as she could throw him, and her master didn’t tell her a thing about himself or the child that he didn’t absolutely have to, but they were two friendless adults managing a household with three children together. Eventually, you had to set aside your differences so you could talk to someone over the age of three.

It took a particularly rough day to get them spending evenings in each other’s company. Maxime and the master’s girl were both walking, by then, and Henri was quite vocal when he wanted to leave the house. It had been cold and rainy the last few days, and there was sun at last, so Claudette found her master and asked whether he could take his child for the day so that she could take the boys to market.

He looked out the window, and then back to her. “I was thinking of going out myself, actually,” he said. “We might as well all walk in together.” Seeing her face, he added, “We’ll split off once we get to the city. I wouldn’t mind a little one-on-one time with my kid, anyway.”

They walked together in silence, broken only by Henri’s chattering and the little ones’ babbling. The girl kept fidgeting with the veil draped over her eyes, and it was satisfying to watch the master having to pick her up and keep her hands away from her face the way Claudette had to when they were out in public on their own.

The smell hit them before they even made it to the city gates. The children all wrinkled their noses, and Maxime began to cry. Even behind his dark spectacles, the master looked uneasy. He was thinking the same thing Claudette was thinking: plague. They turned around, ignoring Henri’s protests. One was always bound to encounter a pile of corpses in a city of the fourteenth century, but the piles of corpses you saw during a plague were something else. They were huge, blackened, stinking masses; nothing like the usual child-appropriate piles of corpses of the medieval city.

The children were insufferable for the rest of the day. Maxime wouldn’t stop wailing, Henry wouldn’t stop complaining, and the girl ran about the house like a child possessed. The chaos and their worry over the people they knew in town were too much, and when the master offered Claudette some wine to share, she didn’t have it in her to say no.

One thing led to another, and three hours later they were lounging on the floor in front of the hearth in the parlor, passing a bottle of very expensive wine between them.

“I hate plagues,” he said. He took a large glug of wine from the bottle and passed it to her.

“Lose somebody, did you?”

“Lotsa somebodies,” he replied. “Lots an’ lots an’ lots. I mean, the forties were bad enough, but it keeps coming in waves every few years. It never stops.”

Claudette took a drink and set the bottle down. “‘The forties’? You don’t look anything near old enough to remember that.”

He shrugged. “M’older than I look.”

“Ha!” She picked the bottle back up and gestured to him with it. “You’d have to be, what, fifty? Sixty to remember any of that?”

He didn’t answer her. “Y’know,” he slurred, “we’ve lived together, what, over a year now? We’ve got kids an’ all, an’ I feel like I barely know you.”

Claudette took a great gulp and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, staining it red. “You’re the one who said no questions when I moved in. Which is ridiculous, by the way, because you’re not good at hiding anything.”

“No?” He took the bottle from her as she passed it to him and drank from it thoughtfully. He smiled. “No. I s’pose not. So, what’re your theories?”

“Some sort of dragon, maybe.”

He laughed. “ _What_?”

“I don’t know! It’s magic, it’s like a serpent.”

“Have dragons got human forms I haven’t heard about? Is that a thing in France?”

“They could! Lots of creatures have human forms!”

“Well, yes, obviously.” He gestured to himself. “Hello. But a _dragon_?”

She felt her face flush. “I could tell you my likelier theories, master, but I think they’d offend you.”

He raised an eyebrow at her and passed her the bottle. “Offend me, then,” he said. “It’ll probably get you closer to the truth. And stop calling me ‘master.’ It feels weird when we’re drinking.”

“You’re my employer,” she said, stalling in the hopes that he’d forget. “What else am I meant to call you?”

“My _name_. We’re quite literally drunk off our arses on the floor. You can call me Antoine like every other human friend I’ve ever had.” He paused. “Bloody hell, you really are my only friend right now. And I _pay_ you.”

Claudette stared at him, and then she took a swig from the bottle herself. “I suppose I’m better off than I was. Maybe my only friend is my employer, but before this I was friendless.” She looked at him. “So you had friends before we came here, Antoine?”

He snorted. “Where do you think Melanie came from?”

“I assumed you did something dark and horrid to create her. So, what, she had a mother and she died?” she asked. She clapped a hand over her mouth immediately, cursing the drink that was getting to her head.

Her master gave her a sidelong glance. “No,” he said, glancing at her in a way that said, _I forgive you, I’ll give you this much, but don’t push it_. “No, she’s still out there as far as I know.”

“Oh,” said Claudette.

She didn’t ask what that meant, why the girl was with her father and not with her mother. It would have been silly to ask. Claudette may have had to fight hard to resist loving the girl, to remember that she wasn’t really a child the way that her children were, but there was a reason she fought it in the first place. She remembered the sick feeling in her stomach the first time her master had handed his child to her, and she couldn’t imagine being the person who’d given birth to something with those eyes. But now, that something was growing into a little girl full of joy and curiosity and what appeared to be earnest, bone-deep love for everyone in her life. She broke into an open-mouthed grin whenever she saw Claudette, she delighted in the wordless games she and Maxime played, and although they drove each other up the wall she even found it in her heart to bring Henri pretty rocks and seashells that she found on the beach as gifts.

Claudette understood the world she lived in, that meddling in forces outside of what God had designated for man was wicked and self-destructive. She understood that, if Melanie’s mother was human, she’d done exactly what somebody with that understanding of the world ought to do when she’d given the girl up. She just hadn’t considered that Melanie might have a mother to give her up in the first place, and it threw her memory of the young man with the hungry newborn and the heavy purse who’d come to a beggar woman for help into sharp relief. It twisted her heart to think about, and she didn’t like it. It was dangerous to let a devil have power over your heart like that.

She passed him the bottle. “Melanie’s better off.”

He smiled and lifted the bottle to toast her, and then he drank. “Sssssso,” he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “What’re your offensive theories?”

Claudette rolled her eyes. “An ass with serpent’s eyes,” she said. “What do you care what I think? I do my job, don’t I?”

“Fine, fine,” he said, passing the bottle back to her. “You’re right, no more questions.”

She was hungover the next morning, and she’d have slept late if Henri hadn’t crawled into bed with her.

“Maman,” he whispered.

Claudette groaned. “What is it, mon chou?”

The toddler drew himself up, looking very important. “The master said to ask you if you wanted to sleep more.”

“And why would he not just let me sleep?”

“He says— Um. I forget. I think he wants to watch us so you can sleep, but he says you don’t like us being alone with him.”

Claudette squinted at her son. She thought about it, about the unwelcome twist in her heart she half-remembered the night before, and then she tried to sit up. It hurt, and she lay back down. “Fine,” she hissed. “Let him look after you and be good for him. And you tell him that if anything happens to you, I’ll bring Father Delacroix over for a visit.”

Henri nodded seriously. “Okay,” he said. He got up on his tip-toes and kissed her forehead. “Sleep well!”

The door shut, and Claudette wondered whether she’d regret what she just did. But then she slept, and by the time she was awake again her hangover was mostly gone and her boys were having a wonderful time playing with their toys on the floor of the foyer under Antoine’s attentive eye.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The world's fucking weird rn. Here's a tiny slice of tenderness with grandbaby number 1.

The business of having a baby held no great mystery for Melanie. Motherhood, sure, she’d packed up her life and moved back to England for the promises that held, but first she had to get through the birth. And Melanie had brought enough slimy, squalling infants into the world before the invention of painkillers that she had little room in her head beyond practicalities.

Adja had never been involved in the birth of a child beyond spiritual duties, nor had she ever imagined in her wildest dreams that one day she’d be a mother herself. And while the first arms that ever held Melanie were the same arms that carried her to a well to be drowned, the first arms that held Adja belonged to a woman in the village who’d go on to scold and counsel and tease her all her young life. The idea of standing idle next to Melanie while she delivered their child into the arms of some doctor just didn’t sit right with her.

So Melanie met her halfway, teaching Adja everything she knew about midwifery and how to cheat at it using magic. And when little Lucien was born, the first arms that held him were his mother’s.

After that, things were fuzzier for both of them, and Crowley picked up the slack where Melanie’s jadedness and Adja’s determination ended. He volunteered himself and Aziraphale as night nurses, taking up residence in the girls’ guest room in their Brighton home so the new mothers could sleep. As Crowley pointed out, he didn’t have to, and Aziraphale still didn’t do more than nap.

It wasn’t often that Crowley took charge of a situation, which was a comfort. Not that Crowley was all that calm. He was trying not to let on to Melanie, but he felt badly that she’d passed on Crowley’s slit pupils to another generation. The color was human-looking, at least, with splotches of yellow dispersed among green and brown in his hazel eyes.

But, to Aziraphale’s surprise, he was even more frazzled than Crowley. Crowley, at the very least, had been down this road before. It had been a long time ago, and he’d had a mother of two to walk him through the earliest days, but he understood on a basic level that the baby wasn’t going to just stop breathing in his sleep.

When Lucien was five days old, Aziraphale sat up with a chair pulled up to his crib, a book sitting unread in his lap as he watched his grandson’s tiny chest rising and falling. It was a silly impulse for an angel to have when he could feel that the child was just fine, but he looked so fragile—so human—and Aziraphale needed to see that he was alright with human eyes.

Soft footsteps padded down the hall. “Angel?”

He turned around, startled to see Crowley up. “Hm?”

“I’ve woken up three times and you’ve been gone. Everything alright?”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, bashfully casting his eyes downward.

Crowley gave him a dubious frown and approached the crib. Lucien stirred slightly at the sound, but he didn’t wake up.

“He’s being awfully quiet, for a newborn,” said Crowley, glancing pointedly back at Aziraphale. “ _Miraculously_ quiet.”

Aziraphale’s face grew hot, and he _knew,_ even in the dark and under the pigment of his skin, that Crowley’s eyes could see the heat as it crept up his neck. “He was frightened, the poor dear,” he said. “Everything’s very loud and bright for him.”

Crowley sighed and put a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “He’ll never get used to it if you keep miracling that fear away, Aziraphale. He’s got to learn on his own.”

He must have looked terribly ashamed, because then Crowley added, “I did that at first, with Mel, but then I realized… I mean, it’s sort of a free will thing, right?”

“What, being afraid?”

“Not the feeling, but the act of recognizing the feeling and telling someone about it. Crying’s the only way Lucien’s got of talking to us, so he needs to practice so he can move on to things like smiling and laughing.”

Aziraphale sighed and let go of the soothing grip he had on Lucien’s mind. The baby’s eyes fluttered upen, and he began to cry.

Crowley leaned over the edge of the crib and scooped him into his arms. “And here’s the other thing, angel,” he said, holding the baby out to him.

He took him.

“The way he learns to smile and laugh is we help him realize that when he cries, someone’s going to respond to him.”

Aziraphale smiled down at the baby in his arms. “There, there,” he said, rocking him gently. He looked up at Crowley. “Thank you, my dear. Go back to bed. I’ll join you once I’ve put him down.”

Crowley got up on his tip toes to clear the baby, and he kissed him. “Let me get him next time, alright?”

“Alright. See you soon, darling.”

He left the door open a crack as he went, and with a little shushing and bouncing and time, Lucien realized he was alright and went back to sleep all by himself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A "deleted scene" I just wrote now that I don't think was necessary to A Glittering Instrument, but that I had in mind then and that I still think about a lot. This is the conversation Melanie had with her mother in Chapter 7, between the two times Aziraphale checked in on her. It will make no sense if you haven't read Side A. It's a pretty sad one, but idk I've been thinking about the women of Melanie's childhood lately. I'm sure at some point I'll write way more about Luciano and his mother, too. Anyway, here's this.

The door shut behind Aziraphale, leaving Melanie alone with her mother.

Melanie’s eyes drifted slowly back to her. Moments before she’d been raving with anger, but now all Melanie saw was a small, wide-eyed woman who wanted to be anywhere but there.

She pat the bed next to her. “So.”

Her mother sat down. “You’re alive,” she said. “You’ve been alive this whole time.” She took a deep breath. “Antoine raised you?”

She nodded. “He said I was born here, and that this was where you lived. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

“Why did you come?”

“Something happened to Pa—to my father. Something bad. He’ll be alright, eventually, but for now it’s just me and Aziraphale. So, I don’t know. I just wanted to meet you was all.” She looked down. “He never talked about you much, but he never had anything bad to say. I don’t know if he knows… what happened here.”

Marionette winced. “But he is a _demon_ , isn’t he?”

Melanie met her eyes. “Listen, that man Antoine you were friends with, that was probably more or less who he really is. He’s not good at hiding it. So, yeah, he’s a demon, but that’s just his job title. It’s not exactly who he is, deep down.”

“And you have an angel with you.”

“He and my dad go way back. They’re friends. He’s looking after me.”

Marionette bit her lip and stared at Melanie. “You’re my daughter. Melanie.” She said her name slowly, testing each syllable on her tongue. The initial shock was starting to wear off, and a painful look of guilt began to take root on her face. “And you’re not…?”

“Evil?” Melanie provided. “No.” She grimaced. “Hell isn’t exactly a kind master. Papa never wanted that for me.”

“He didn’t?”

She felt something thick at the back of her throat and breathed through it. There were few things Melanie hated more than crying in front of strangers. And this woman, her mother, was a stranger. As soon as the thought rose up, she plunged it back down. It would only make it harder to keep from crying.

“No,” she said, not trusting herself to say more than that.

Marionette’s face softened as she looked at her. “God, you’re just a girl. I could have—“ She took a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry.”

Melanie had to look down at the floor, away from the first parental sympathy she’d received since she said goodbye to Luciano’s mother in Verona. “You didn’t know.”

“Your father tried to tell me. Well—he tried to tell me to… But he took good care of you?”

She shut her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, he’s a really good dad.” Finally, she looked up again. “You said he begged you not to have me?”

“Oh, God, Melanie, I’m sorry. I thought you were him. If I’d known—“

“I know. I just want to know what happened. Papa never mentioned any of this.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t want you to know.”

“Well, it’s too late for that. Please?”

“I think he was afraid for me. It wouldn’t have been easy for me—it _wasn’t_ easy for me.” She looked around the room, her eyes going beyond the four walls. “I came here to have you and give myself to God as penance for it. My sons went to stay with their uncle until my oldest could take his father’s lands, and I had to explain to the Mother Superior what had happened.” She gave her a sad smile. “I tried to take your father’s advice, but you were a survivor.”

She swallowed another lump in her throat. “I guess. I mean, it hasn’t been easy for him, either. I had a nursemaid when I was little who said a prayer for me. Heaven sent Aziraphale to kill me, and if he hadn’t been friends with my dad, he might have. We had to run away to Venice after that. And now… Well.” Melanie swallowed again. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. Aziraphale tried to tell me not to.”

“No, it’s—I’ve always wondered, you know, what might have been if Antoine was who he said he was. I don’t think we’d have married, but he was always so good to our sons—mine and my husband’s, I mean. Your half-brothers.”

Melanie wanted her dad. That, she realized, was why she’d come to this place. Her father had never talked all that much about her mother, and until she found out she was going to be crossing the French border, she’d never wondered much about her, either. She hadn’t wanted to know that she had blood siblings out there in the world, or that her mother had tried to have her killed the day she was born, or that there had ever been a time her father hadn’t wanted her to be born at all. She’d just wanted the only parent she had left.

But she wasn’t any parent of Melanie’s. She had her blood, but in practice she was a woman who had spent her life trying to move past all the terrible things that had followed her husbands death—her friend’s apparent betrayal, the birth and death of a monster she had to carry for nine months. And Melanie had just turned all that on its head. Aziraphale had been right, she’d had no right to come here. Not when she’d come expecting this poor woman to fill the hole she’d just left by killing her father.

She looked away. “Sorry, I’m very tired all of a sudden. I’ve been traveling for so long, and I did most of the driving to get here.”

Marionette didn’t look convinced, but she said, “Alright. But, before I go… I’m sorry for whatever’s happened to Antoine. Before that, though, were you happy? Did you have a good life growing up?”

Melanie shrugged. “Yeah. It wasn’t always easy, but it was good.”

Her mother hesitated, and then she leaned across the foot of the bed and kissed her forehead. “Good. Then I’m glad I got to meet you.”

She stood to go, but then Melanie remembered something.

“Wait!”

Marionette sat back down. “What is it?”

“I have just one thing to ask of you. I know it’s hard. My friend back in Venice always struggled with it. But when you go back to your room tonight, you can’t pray for me. Not ever. Heaven can’t find out Aziraphale knows where I am.”

She nodded. “Between you and me, I’ve never been much good at prayer. It’s not a good look on a nun.”

For the first time that night, Melanie managed a smile. “And raising a kid isn’t a good look on a demon. I can see why he liked you.”

Marionette smiled as well, and she walked to the door. “Goodnight, Melanie. I’ll see you off tomorrow.”

Melanie held her smile until the door shut behind her, and then she curled into a ball on the bed and let the lump in her throat bloom into a sob.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr at @[crowleyraejepsen](http://www.crowleyraejepsen.tumblr.com/)!


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